


Learning Curve

by celeste9



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Banter, Bickering, First Kiss, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Living Together, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M, Workplace Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 19:59:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Working with Oliver and Diggle isn't quite what Felicity expected. Jury's still out on whether that's a good thing or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning Curve

**Author's Note:**

> Written for smallfandomfest for the prompt: learning to live together.

“Oliver!” Felicity shouted.

Oliver came immediately, not quite running, but moving quickly enough to suggest he thought it was an emergency.

And it was. Just not the sort of emergency Oliver was likely to agree was an emergency.

“What? What is it?” Oliver asked.

Felicity let Oliver stew for a moment and then tilted her head in the direction of her keyboard.

Oliver just looked confused. “Am I supposed to be seeing something?”

Felicity crossed her arms over her chest. “Were you using my station?”

“Um. Yeah? Yeah, I did, why?”

“Were you eating at my station?”

“No? Wait, yes. Dig and I had Chinese. It was late and we were hungry.”

Ah. Chinese. That made sense. “You dripped on my keyboard.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Oliver didn’t really sound all that sorry.

“It’s sticky! It’s gross, Oliver, I have to work here.”

“So clean it up.”

Felicity counted to five so she didn’t explode. “You clean it up! You pig, _you_ made the mess at _my_ station! And this isn’t the first time, either, you’ve left cartons and--”

“What seems to be the problem here?” Diggle asked mildly, walking in from the club.

“Felicity’s overreacting--”

“Oliver is a disgusting pig--”

Diggle held his hand up and they both stopped talking. “Oliver, please clean up your mess. It isn’t fair to Felicity.”

Felicity smiled smugly as Oliver turned wide eyes to Diggle. “Aw, Dig, but--”

“Felicity,” Diggle interrupted, redirecting his attention to her. “You don’t have to shout. It’s not that big a deal.”

Oliver sniggered as the smirk fell off Felicity’s face.

“Now then,” Diggle went, his own mouth curving slightly in amusement. “Apologize to each other. We don’t want any hard feelings, do we?”

Felicity decided she felt like a little kid being scolded. She didn’t care for it. She was pretty sure that her face probably looked a lot like Oliver’s at the moment. “Sorry,” she muttered, as Oliver did the same.

“That’s better. Maybe you can each get an ice cream later for your good behavior.”

Oliver smacked Diggle in the shoulder but they were both laughing.

-

Felicity was settling in for a night spent catching up with her DVR when she heard a crash coming from the direction of her bedroom. She sprang to her feet, eyes searching for something she could use as a weapon even as she grabbed her cell to call for help.

Then she heard Oliver’s voice cursing.

“Don’t you know how to use a door?” Felicity called, rolling her eyes as she headed towards her bedroom. She paused in the doorway, looking at Oliver crumpled on the floor by her bed, leaning against the side. “Oh my God, Oliver,” she said, rushing to kneel beside him. “What the hell have you been doing?”

Oliver was bleeding rather profusely from a head wound and his eyes looked somewhat out of focus. “Saving Starling City?”

“Doing a bang-up job of it, too,” Felicity said, pressing the edge of her pillow to Oliver’s head because it was the closest thing she had to hand. “You should be in a hospital.”

“No hospitals. My mother…”

“This whole secret identity thing really sucks,” Felicity said, but she did the only thing she could think of. She called Diggle.

He answered after two rings and Felicity said, “Sorry to bother you, but Oliver’s bleeding all over my bedroom.”

“On my way,” Diggle said and hung up.

Oliver’s eyes had slid shut and Felicity smacked his cheek lightly. “Hey, I don’t think sleeping’s a good idea when you’ve probably got a concussion.”

“Not nice to hit me, I’m wounded,” Oliver murmured.

“Yes, you are, you big baby. Mr. Diggle will be here soon.”

And he was, fast enough that Felicity suspected he’d broken quite a few traffic laws. “Damn, Oliver,” Diggle said as he laid eyes on Oliver’s slumped form. “I hope you realize we’re gonna be discussing your extracurricular activities as soon as I’m convinced you’re not going to keel over.”

“Looking forward to it, Dig,” Oliver said, lifting his hand in a weak wave.

“Here, Felicity, help me get him on the bed.”

Between the two of them - it was mostly Diggle, to be fair - they dragged Oliver up onto Felicity’s bed, laying him over the covers. Felicity had never been so glad of her boring old bedspread as she was at that moment. Well, it was pink, but she wasn’t ashamed of pink.

“This isn’t how I pictured getting you into my bed,” Felicity said and then winced. “Crap. I should really just be quiet, shouldn’t I?”

Oliver grunted as they jostled him but was otherwise silent. Diggle ran his hands over Oliver’s chest once he was settled, careful but sure.

“Think I maybe bruised a rib,” Oliver admitted.

“Better than last time, at least.” Diggle inspected Oliver’s head while Felicity mourned the loss of her pillow. That was definitely going in the trash.

“I’ve got some first aid stuff in the bathroom,” she said and went to collect it, hearing the low murmur of their voices as she retreated down the hallway.

When she returned, Oliver had one hand curled around Diggle’s thigh while Diggle leaned over him, gently brushing aside his hair. Not for the first time, Felicity wondered exactly what she had intruded upon by joining this little gang. “Here,” she said.

Diggle smiled at her and took what she offered, cleaning Oliver’s wound and dressing it. Felicity watched him, definitely not missing the tenderness with which he touched Oliver, and determined that she really needed to sign up for a first aid class.

“You’re the best, Dig,” Oliver said, closing his eyes as Diggle finished.

“I’m certainly too good for you,” Diggle agreed. “We’ll be waking you up in a bit, so don’t get too comfortable.”

“I take it back. You kind of suck, Dig.”

Diggle chuckled. “Yeah, yeah. Go to sleep.”

Felicity sank down into her desk chair. “He’s gonna be okay?”

“He’ll be fine,” Diggle replied reassuringly. That was a good word for him, reassuring. Reliable and reassuring. “Mild concussion, some aches and pains, that’s all. Sorry for commandeering your bed.”

Felicity waved him off. “That was Oliver, he’s gonna be the one buying me a new bedspread. And a pillow. Is this going to be a regular thing?”

“With Oliver? Yeah, pretty much.”

“I’m so glad I let myself become the Moneypenny to Oliver’s James Bond. Or would I be the Q?”

“I’m detecting a little bit of sarcasm there.”

“Yeah, just a little.” Felicity sighed. “Honestly, I’m kind of sorry I ever got involved in this whole mess.”

“For the record, I’m not. No sarcasm.”

Felicity felt something warm curl in her belly at that, at Diggle’s tone and the way he looked at her. He was still on the bed next to Oliver, just barely touching, and Felicity thought that maybe, craziness and all, she had found somewhere she belonged.

-

Oliver and Felicity squabbled a lot. Sort of like how siblings fought, except Felicity was fairly certain she wouldn’t find a brother as hot as she found Oliver. Hopefully. Diggle mostly ignored them but occasionally acted as peacemaker.

It went a lot like this.

“OLIVER!”

“FELICITY!”

“If I have to come over there I’m spanking the both of you!”

Felicity met Oliver’s eyes and saw the same curiosity and hint of consideration she herself was feeling, and then they both collapsed into peals of laughter.

When Diggle wandered into sight, he took one look at them and raised up his hands, shaking his head. “I don’t even want to know,” he muttered, which of course only made them laugh more.

Felicity had a very interesting dream that night. She elected not to tell anyone about it.

-

A couple of weeks after the incident with Oliver in Felicity’s bedroom, when Felicity got to Verdant at the ass crack of dawn, stopping by before she had to go in to work, she was greeted by the sight of Diggle stitching a cut on Oliver’s arm.

“Totally a regular thing,” she muttered to herself.

-

It all started gradually. Working with Oliver and Diggle was kind of an ordeal, you know? Sometimes Felicity thought it was more than she could take and there was no one she could talk to about it, no one who wasn’t Oliver or Diggle.

So sometimes, when she thought she might crack into a million little pieces, she called them. She sat on Diggle’s couch and watched the sort of TV that was probably rotting her brain, and then sometimes it got so late that Diggle told her she should just stay. She did, and he insisted she take the bed, and Felicity thought it was rude to kick him out of his own bed so she said she wouldn’t sleep in it unless he did, too, so then they shared. Which was fine, because it was a big bed and it was only Diggle. Not that he wasn’t hot, because, have you seen his arms?

And sometimes she ended up with Oliver, who pretended like nothing ever got to him but that was crap, and she curled into his side without him asking but he always pulled her closer and she could feel how he relaxed just a little when she was there. He even smiled sometimes, those rare, small, genuine smiles like when he was with Diggle and it made Felicity incredibly pleased with herself whenever she earned one.

Then more and more often it was the three of them together. Arguing over the remote, sharing big bowls of popcorn, ordering take-out.

Oliver had this habit of coming in through the window, because he was weird like that, but she and Diggle would move over so Oliver could squeeze in with them on the couch and they could go back to watching Avengers and making jokes at Oliver’s expense where he could actually hear them. (Come on. Like they could resist the Hawkeye comparisons.) Oliver would steal spoonfuls of ice cream and Diggle would roll his eyes and then, well, you know, things led to other things.

Yeah, they were also sleeping together. In the platonic sense. Mostly.

It was just that Felicity could feel so alone sometimes, and saving Starling City was so damned hard, and she needed to feel close to someone, to feel like she was really _with_ someone. Oliver and Diggle made her feel safe in a way that she had started to think she couldn’t anymore, not with all the crap that had filled her life of late.

Anyway, that was all basically a roundabout way of saying that Felicity was sharing a bed with Oliver and Diggle and it wasn’t only for the sake of convenience anymore.

And, okay, it might have been true that Felicity woke up a lot with other people’s limbs draped over her kind of intimately and it might have been true that she enjoyed that way more than she should have. It also might have been true that, from time to time, she noticed Oliver and/or Diggle being, well, interested.

But they didn’t talk about that.

-

“Oliver, come look at this, I--” Felicity stopped as she caught sight of Oliver.

He was sitting perched next to Diggle, who seemed to have collapsed on his face, mouth slightly open as he breathed. Felicity immediately brought her hand up to cover her mouth and stifle her giggle.

Oliver held a finger to his lips and Felicity returned his small smile. He looked back down to Diggle, something soft and warm in his expression, before getting up to grab a blanket and drape it over Diggle’s shoulders. Felicity couldn’t stop watching and it probably should have felt intrusive, invading their private moment, but instead she just kept thinking, _those are my boys._ Which probably should have felt weird, but it didn’t.

She turned back to her monitors when Oliver walked over to her, placing a hand lightly on her shoulder and saying quietly, “What’s up, Felicity?”

Back to work.

-

Diggle’s apartment was the nicest. Well, actually, Oliver’s house was the _nicest,_ because it was, you know, a _mansion,_ but still. Diggle’s apartment was the best. It was cozy and friendly-seeming and Felicity loved Diggle’s paintings (he did do them himself, there were few things Felicity liked better than watching him paint on a quiet evening). Oliver’s house was… too big, and too impersonal, and she felt like an intruder whenever she set foot inside, like it was somewhere she could never belong. Oliver’s mother and sister were there, too, and they were nice enough but they weren’t…

They weren’t Oliver and Diggle. They weren’t hers.

Not that she thought of Oliver and Diggle as hers, exactly, because that was just silly. Except she kind of did.

Anyway. Then there was Felicity’s apartment, which was fine and all, it was nice enough for what she was paying in rent, but Diggle’s was better. That was surely why, more and more, Felicity found herself at Diggle’s, like it was nearly automatic. Natural. She and Diggle and Oliver, just… hanging out.

Diggle’s apartment started to feel more like home than her own.

-

“Felicity. Felicity, wake up.”

“Mmph,” she said, though she was pretty sure that was supposed to have been words.

There was a warm chuckle that she thought was Diggle and someone was stroking her hair. Her head was in someone’s lap and it was probably bad that she didn’t know whom the lap belonged to.

“You’ll be more comfortable in a bed.” That was Oliver. Probably.

Felicity curled up tighter. “No, ’m fine, really. Super comfortable. Bit more muscular than my pillow, but, still, nice. Really nice.”

She was going to be so embarrassed in the morning.

-

Sometimes Felicity watched when Oliver and Diggle were ‘training’. She used quotations because mostly it looked like they were trying to kick the crap out of each other. Sort of like a dick-measuring contest except theoretically it was useful practice for when they were fighting bad guys.

Felicity was learning self-defense, too, but the guys were so far out of her league it was kind of ridiculous. Probably if one of them ever forgot to pull a punch she’d end up with a concussion or a broken nose. She was getting better, though.

Anyway, she watched sometimes, when it was just Oliver and Diggle. It was weirdly entertaining and they were both hilariously competitive.

It was also kind of insanely hot, but she was keeping that to herself. 

Not very well, though, apparently, because more and more frequently, Oliver took to walking around sweaty and shirtless long after he’d finished with Diggle. He liked to get into Felicity’s personal space and just stay there, like an asshole, an incredibly attractive asshole.

Diggle never even called him on it, though he certainly noticed. He seemed to find it all funny.

Felicity reconsidered her opinion on Diggle. She’d been way too generous. Clearly he was capable of being an asshole, too.

-

“Has anyone seen my jacket?” Felicity yelled, running around with her purse and keys in one hand and coffee in the other.

“If you’d put it in the closet like a normal person, it’d be there,” Diggle called from the bathroom.

“Not helpful!” Felicity ducked into the living room. “Oh! Gotcha,” she said, spotting the sleeve of it hanging over the arm of the couch. She went to grab it and then said, “Oliver.”

Oliver blinked up at her from where he was sprawled lengthwise, his head on the arm and thus on top of Felicity’s jacket. He slurred something that was probably supposed to be ‘good morning’.

“Oliver, go back to bed. In an actual bed.”

“Nah, gettin’ up,” Oliver insisted, but he didn’t move.

Felicity knew he hadn’t gotten in until, oh, two hours ago, going by the time on her watch, having been hanging out in Verdant and possibly even working (she liked to give him the benefit of the doubt). He had tumbled into the bed, gracelessly enough to wake Felicity and Diggle, but they’d just adjusted their tangled limbs to accommodate Oliver and gone back to sleep. She wondered why he’d even bothered relocating himself, unless it was because everyone else had gotten up.

Setting her coffee down momentarily, she pushed Oliver gently so she could tug out her jacket from underneath him. “You know what’s nice about being a rich playboy vigilante with a night job? No one expects you to be out and about in the wee hours of the morning.” Not like Felicity, who was now late. Crap.

“Good to be me,” Oliver murmured.

Felicity smiled fondly at him. For all Oliver’s flaws, he could really be almost unbearably cute sometimes. “Yes, it is. Hey, Dig?”

Diggle came into view in a few seconds, tying his tie. “You called?”

“Can you deal with this? I’m late for work.”

Brown eyes shining with amusement, Diggle moved closer and squeezed Felicity’s shoulder. “Sure thing. Oliver wrangling is in my job description anyway.”

“You’re the best,” Felicity said, going on her tiptoes to peck him on the cheek. She pulled her jacket on and retrieved her coffee, practically fleeing the room. “See you boys later! Try not to burn the city down without me!”

-

“Felicity.”

“Hmm?” Felicity glanced up from her tablet.

Diggle was dangling an article of clothing between his fingers. Felicity squinted at it.

Then she blushed. She sprang up from her seat and grabbed the offending item, hiding it behind her back. “Um. I have no idea how that got wherever it was.”

Diggle was simply smiling at her in that way that let her know he was amused by her and not at her. If that made any sense outside of Felicity’s head, which it probably didn’t. “I think we should probably have a conversation if you’re at my place often enough to be leaving unmentionables lying around.”

“Oliver’s socks were on the kitchen counter last week,” Felicity said defensively.

“I was attempting to multi-task,” Oliver said, heading into the room from the direction of said kitchen and taking a large bite out of an apple. “You weren’t gonna eat this, were you?” he asked Diggle.

“A conversation including Oliver,” Diggle amended.

“A conversation about what? Because I got rid of the socks--”

“A conversation about how I seem to have acquired two extra houseguests,” Diggle interrupted.

“Oh.” Oliver frowned and then he held out the apple. “You can have the rest,” he said with a smirk.

Diggle rolled his eyes. “Thank you, Oliver, that’s very considerate of you, but you can go ahead and have the rest of that half-eaten apple covered in your own spit.”

Oliver grinned around the apple. “Is it about the space? Because you know you’re both welcome at my place, it just seemed like you didn’t like it there and, well, my family makes it kind of awkward. Thea asks a lot of inappropriate questions.”

“It’s not about the space.”

Felicity had retreated back to the couch, listening silently, clutching her tablet in her lap and feeling vaguely guilty without entirely understanding why. “I should have offered to pitch in on your bills; I know I use a lot of electricity--”

“You don’t need to pay my bills, Felicity,” Diggle said, watching her with his soft brown eyes. “If there’s one thing I haven’t had to worry about since I started working for Oliver, it’s money.”

Oliver tossed the apple core on the coffee table. It was gross. “See, I am a good employer.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“But I’ve provided you with financial security.”

“Which is the only sort of security you can possibly offer me.”

“Yeah, I was thinking I probably owe you some sort of work hazard pay.”

Their ridiculous banter drifted in the background of Felicity’s consciousness while her thoughts raced a mile a minute. This was happening, they were having, like, a family meeting, because somehow she and Oliver had started spending more time at Diggle’s apartment than they did at their own residences. Which was crazy, right? It was so crazy.

Felicity deliberately tried to focus on the last time she had slept in her own bed, by herself. Not Diggle’s bed, not Oliver’s little hide-out at Verdant, but her actual bed in her actual apartment. She thought maybe she’d crashed there last Monday. Holy crap.

“Oh my God, we’re living together,” Felicity burst out, drawing the gazes of both Oliver and Diggle. “I mean, we’re actually _living together_ , aren’t we? We’re cohabitating except we’re not having sex. I can’t believe I said that out loud.”

Diggle and Oliver were exchanging glances and suddenly Felicity wondered whether she’d been missing something. Were Oliver and Diggle having sex without her? When they said they were off to do dangerous vigilante stuff was that only a euphemism? Was she the third wheel? Had she been kidding herself that there was actually room for her in their lives?

“Am I the third wheel?” Felicity asked, looking from Oliver to Diggle. “I feel so stupid. Also really, really embarrassed.” The secret fantasies she might have possibly had and then buried in the back of her mind never to be considered in the light of day felt humiliating and even more ludicrous now.

Diggle sat down on the couch next to her, resting his hand gently on her knee while Oliver perched on the arm. “You aren’t the third wheel.”

“Dig and I aren’t having sex,” Oliver elaborated. “But we could have sex. You know, all of us.”

“Wow, Oliver. You are so classy,” Diggle said, shaking his head a little.

Oliver just shrugged. “I’m just saying. I mean, I’ve been told I can be pretty oblivious but I’ve been waiting for you two to figure out I want to have sex with you for basically forever.”

“And you couldn’t just, I don’t know, mention it?”

“That seemed crude.”

“Oh, right, adults having a mature conversation about sex and relationships. How incredibly crude; so much cruder than you randomly blurting out the suggestion that we have a three-way.”

“You have to be gentle with me, Dig, I don’t do relationships. This is like a whole new world for me.”

“Are you being serious?” Felicity broke in before they could continue their careless chatter. “Is this an actual thing that’s happening? Because if it’s a joke, I really don’t think it’s funny and I think you should stop.”

The guys both turned their focus to her, which was kind of unnerving. “I don’t think Oliver was joking, Felicity,” Diggle said.

“I wasn’t,” Oliver agreed. “We should definitely have sex.”

Diggle reached up to thwap Oliver on the head. “Is that something you might be interested in, Felicity?”

Felicity stared at him, blinking. It was suddenly very difficult to figure out how to put words together. She also wasn’t completely sure that she wasn’t hallucinating, because Oliver and Diggle seemed to be asking her if she wanted in on a three-way with them. Which had to be a hallucination. It had to be. Right? “Um. What?”

“Okay, let’s break this down,” Oliver said, and if Oliver was the one being sensible, there was something seriously wrong. “I like you guys, you guys like me, you like each other. Right?”

“Right,” Felicity cautiously agreed.

“We’ve got this nice little platonic thing going on here, but the thing is, pretty sure it’s only platonic in the sense we haven’t technically had sex. But seriously, it’s not normal for three people to live like this and not be having sex.”

“The wisdom of Oliver Queen, ladies and gentlemen,” Diggle said, gesturing to Oliver like he was onstage.

“Hey, I made a compelling case.”

“You know what?” Felicity said, because, just. They were doing this, okay? She was doing this. She got up, leaning one knee on the couch, then cupped Diggle’s face in her hands and kissed him on the mouth. He was too surprised to do much more than stay there, his hands coming up to rest loosely on her hips, but it was definitely not an ‘oh God please stop kissing me what the hell’ reaction.

It was quick, and then Felicity drew back and moved to Oliver, who was smirking infuriatingly at her. “You’re lucky you’re so hot,” she muttered and then kissed him, too. He managed to put a little tongue into it.

Felicity thought she might have been blushing the tiniest bit but she didn’t have too much opportunity to dwell because when she stopped kissing Oliver, he simply leaned over, one hand on Diggle’s cheek, and kissed him, too.

And, yeah, that was hot.

“I think we’re all agreed now,” Oliver said, smirking that irritating smirk again.

Except it wasn’t actually that irritating, because it was Oliver, but also because it was Oliver, Felicity decided that while there might be many good ways to go about this, there was also a better way.

Felicity whispered into Diggle’s ear. He chuckled, warm and low. They both looked at Oliver.

Oliver’s smirk was wavering. “Um, so, I’m not sure if this is going to be really bad for me or really, really good.”

“Probably both,” Diggle said, exchanging a glance with Felicity.

She grabbed Oliver’s hand and he let her tug him off the arm of the couch. “Definitely both.”

“I am so okay with that,” Oliver said.

They might have gone about this backwards, but the important thing, Felicity told herself, was that they’d arrived at the point in the end.

Making up for lost time was going to be amazing.

**_End_ **


End file.
